Texas Brides Collection (29 page)

“You okay, Jenny?” Another deep voice, this one with the rich slur of Tennessee, spoke from far away.

Colonel J. S. Hanks rode up on the splendid stud stallion her father once owned. Jenny sighed. She had nothing suitable to serve them for dinner as country hospitality required. “Yes, sir, just feeling a little peaked.”

“I haven’t been this way lately, and with school out for the summer, we haven’t seen your brothers. Tom or your pa around?”

“You just saw them, sir.”

The fine leather saddle creaked as he shifted his weight. She could smell the sweat on his horse, and her stomach turned again.

“How’s that?” he asked.

Jenny jerked her head in Charles Moss’s direction. “He told me where you were. That’s Tom and Pa lying up there in those new graves with Ma. Yellow fever got ’em.”

C
harles stepped away. He’d been too close to a vomiting woman who had a burning hot forehead. He knew the symptoms of the deadly disease.

The colonel, however, got off his horse and handed the reins to Charles. “Tie him off.” He removed his hat. “My condolences, Jenny. How long ago did they pass?”

She waved her hand wearily. “A week, ten days, maybe. I wrote the date in the Bible under Ma and the boys’ dates.” She made as if to get up, but the colonel indicated she should stay put.

“Where are Caleb and Micah?”

The pale woman pointed to the south. “They’re trying to work the hay. Storm may be coming, and we need to get it in.” All three scanned the western horizon, the direction weather came. Charles saw tall white billowy clouds, but nothing appeared dangerous. Of course, he’d not been in the county very long.

“Are they well?” Colonel Hanks asked. “How about Tom’s mother?”

She nodded. “We feared we might get sick, too, but didn’t.” She sniffed. “Pa wouldn’t let us stay, told us to take Ma Duncan and return in three days. We left ’em here and slept in the old dugout. They were dead when we came home.”

“I’m sorry,” Colonel Hanks said. “Your pa was a fine man. Tom fought hard in the war.”

The woman stared at him.

“I’m sure Tom would’ve found peace in time and settled down.”

Charles watched her reaction. Her pretty face blushed, and he saw she wanted to believe the colonel. She pushed back tangled mahogany curls with a large, strong hand. “Thank you for your kind words.”

“You want the preacher out here to pray over the graves?” Hanks asked. “Why didn’t you send notice? Rachel will be troubled you didn’t let her know.”

“None of us have been feeling too good.” The tall woman leaned against the porch rail.

A curlew bird swooped from the rooftop toward the thick woods on the other side of the road. The colonel watched it fly then indicated Charles. “This here’s Charles Moss from Lexington, Kentucky. He’s helping me survey and will teach at the Stovall Academy come fall.”

Charles stepped forward. “Sorry to hear about your loss, ma’am.”

“Jenny Duncan.” She introduced herself in a murmur. “Thank you for your sympathy.”

The colonel put his hat on and waved at the neat farmyard. A fenced-in pasture contained several yearlings and their sturdy dams. A roomy wooden barn separated the farmyard from the pastureland. “Jenny’s pa and her husband ran this farm. How many horses have you got?”

“Two dozen head,” Jenny whispered. “Do you need a horse?”

“Not right now. I tell you what, we don’t need to complete the survey work today.” Colonel Hanks slipped off his black jacket and loosened the string tie around his throat. He tossed them across his saddle. “We’ll help the boys bring in the hay. You’re right, a storm’s brewing.”

Charles’s jaw dropped. Sure, he knew all about feeding horses, but he hadn’t harvested hay in years. “We’re not dressed for hard labor, sir.”

Hanks’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not willing to help a widow lady and some orphans? I thought you were a Christian man.”

“Mr. Moss is right,” Jenny said. “This isn’t suitable work for you, Colonel.”

“I can’t think of any better,” Hanks said.

She frowned. “I can offer you Tom and Pa’s old clothes. I don’t know if they’d fit so well, but you wouldn’t damage yours.”

Charles didn’t fancy wearing a dead man’s clothes and particularly not Tom Duncan’s. “I’ll be fine. Where are we headed?”

“They’re in the southern fields, at the bend in the river,” Jenny said.

The colonel tipped his hat. “We’ll be on our way.”

“I’ll take you.” Jenny toted the gun into the wood-framed house and returned wearing a black sunbonnet.

Charles secured his horse then followed them through a split-rail fence into tall grass. The dog, Sal, trotted after him.

Swallows and wrens sped through the grass heads and whisked overhead in smooth movements. Scores of butterflies fluttered in the warm sun, and they surprised several black-tailed jackrabbits.

“Mighty fine property your parents settled,” Hanks said. “Your pa loved this land.”

The woman straightened her lips and a line appeared between her eyebrows. “Yes. Land grants to Pa.”

“I remember.”

The property included large stands of woods to the hilly east, and fenced pastureland dotted with ponds and weeping willows from the road to the wide river. Two young men and a small woman worked with rakes beside a laden wagon several acres away. “Your pa and older brothers worked hard to clear this land by the water.”

“He dreamed of horses,” Jenny said. “This farm meant everything to him.”

When they reached the wagon, Colonel Hanks removed his hat and murmured condolences to Tom’s mother. Her white hair stuck out from the sides of the faded red sunbonnet, and her rheumy blue eyes filled with tears. She seized Colonel Hanks’s left arm. “I’ve lost ’em all now. My family is gone and dead. What’ll become of me stuck here on this farm with these children? I’m lost, I say, lost. We’re doomed.”

“Come now, madam, all is not lost. Your daughter-in-law is here, and the Lord will not allow you to be tested beyond what you can endure.”

Charles noted Jenny didn’t look happy with the colonel’s answer.

“You took my boy, Colonel, and I never got him back until after the war. I never wanted my Tom to marry into this family and make me live so far from town. Now fever took him. What’ll I do now?”

“He thought you would be safer out here,” Jenny murmured.

Colonel Hanks drew himself tall and removed her hand from his arm. “Tom signed on with me of his own choice. He was a man. He made his own decisions.”

“But you came home,” the woman pointed her finger at the colonel. “My boy sat in that prison camp and up to near died. And look where he ended up!” Mrs. Duncan jerked her scowl in Jenny’s direction.

Sal barked, and Mrs. Duncan backed away.

“We’re here to help today. The future’s in God’s hands.” Colonel Hanks beckoned to the boys. Charles saw they were mere teenagers. He glanced at the young widow. How would she manage if the old woman and these two boys were all she had?

“Do you have any hired hands?” he asked.

Jenny shook her head.

The colonel rolled up his shirtsleeves. “The older boy here, he’s Caleb. How old are you now?”

“I’m fifteen come September.” The russet-haired boy’s gawky elbows and legs seemed to be growing while Charles gazed at him. “Micah, he’s thirteen.”

The brown-headed boy patted the dog, only looking at the adults through the corner of his eyes. He still carried baby fat, though it would melt away if he worked the fields the rest of the summer.

Colonel Hanks examined them in the manner of a commanding officer. “This is Charles Moss. He’ll be your teacher at the Stovall Academy. You boys coming to school in the fall?”

They looked at their sister.

“If I can manage the fees,” Jenny finally said.

“I’ll see you at school,” Colonel Hanks told them. “Let’s get to work. Mr. Moss and I will help you today.” Hanks gestured for Charles to take the scythe, and he picked up a hay rake.

Charles hadn”t used a scythe in a long time, but the sweeping cut of the blade at the grass returned easily. He quickly adapted to the rhythm of sweep, step, sweep, step. Once the dog got too close and he nearly took off her ear, but a cry from Caleb saved her.

The boy raked after him. “You serve in the war, Mr. Moss? Is that where you got the scar?”

“Yes.”

“Who with?”

“Second Kentucky. I was one of Morgan’s Raiders.” He waited for the reaction. Even from this Texas teenager, it came in a breathless rush.

“Did you ride with him? With the Thunderbolt of the Confederacy? You knew him?”

“I rode in his cavalry.” Charles felt the pull of unused muscles across his back and shoulders. He continued his sweep, walking slowly and deliberately in a straight path so the hay fell smooth about him, thus making Caleb’s raking easier.

“What was Morgan like?” Caleb asked.

“Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan was a charismatic, well-meaning officer,” Charles said. “He was a good leader, a lot like your Colonel Hanks. Everyone liked him.”

The boy frowned. “Colonel Hanks? He only lasted a year in the war.”

“But he came home,” Charles said. “Morgan died during the war and left a pregnant wife to raise a baby by herself.”

Caleb picked up a stone and tossed it away. Sal sat up to watch it fly but didn’t follow. “That would be tough, raising a baby by yourself without a husband.”

Charles agreed. “How will your family manage without your father?”

The boy shook his head. “Jenny’ll figure something out; she always does. Maybe I won’t go to school.”

So much for Charles teaching them. “What would your parents want?”

“Ma’s been dead eight years, and now Pa’s gone.” He raked up a pile of hay. “Might not matter what they’d have wanted.”

Charles paused in his swing and glanced toward the figure of a determined young woman trying to reason with an agitated old lady. “Someone’s going to need to help you.”

A thought flitted through his mind: Did he want to help her?

Charles swung the scythe.

The last thing he needed was to gamble away his peace of mind on Tom Duncan’s widow.

J
enny didn’t know whether to feel surprised or relieved when Colonel Hanks drove his buggy into the farmyard several days later. His saddle horse trailed behind and Charles Moss followed after, but Jenny’s eyes went to the one person who really mattered: Rachel Hill.

Tears started in her eyes. It had been so long since Tom warned Rachel to stay away. She’d missed her friend so much, but for both their sakes, they’d avoided each other the few times Jenny got to town.

Colonel Hanks reined up, and Rachel handed him the bundle from her lap. She adjusted her straw hat, climbed down, and opened her arms wide.

Jenny ran to meet her. She hadn’t cried since Pa died, but when Rachel hugged her, the tears poured. She felt Rachel’s hand rubbing her back and smelled her lavender scent.

“There now, cry your eyes out. I’m here to help,” Rachel whispered.

By the time Jenny used her apron to mop away the tears, Charles Moss had unhitched the horse from the buggy and led it to pasture. Colonel Hanks handed the now crying bundle to Rachel.

Jenny’s eyes widened.

Rachel’s sweet laugh rang out. “Look who I brought to see you. Meet my baby, Elijah.”

Jenny peered into the blankets where the red-faced baby wailed. “I didn’t know you were expecting.”

“You’ve been hiding out here for more than a year. Elijah was born four months ago.” Rachel’s cornflower-blue eyes shone. “It’s been far too long since we visited.”

“We’re surveying nearby today,” Colonel Hanks said. “We’ll return this afternoon to escort Rachel home.”

“I know this is an imposition, but when Pa volunteered to bring a message, I thought I’d just come.” Rachel lowered her voice. “Is it okay I’m here?”

What could Jenny say? A crying baby, a dear friend, and a dead husband who could no longer protest her friendship, made it easy. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Her mother-in-law scowled from the porch, but Jenny turned away. She watched Sal squirm under the fence to where Charles Moss ran his hands down the front legs of a piebald dam.